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The children of War and Peace or The Jesus of Suburbia and Saint Jimmy
Chris Redfield
Registered User
Registered User
So, this is my story. I only wrote it at first as a school essay, but over the last few days I've really got into editing it and trying to improve it. So here is my final copy, ready for you to read.
My heart beats out a thunderous storm, fuelled by a cocktail of rage and love. The hot trickle of tears streaming down my cheeks scalds me like fire as I stand alone at last. We all come into this world as a solitary being, and though we may live together, intertwining like ropes, we will all die alone. Although, as we twist and turn through life, no matter how hard we try not to, we will eventually become knotted in other lives. Birth and death, the two hardest moments of your life are moments we must all face in isolation. But in-between those dark and forlorn times, there is life. Without others, there can be no life. We will die as soon as we are born, nothing but a momentary existence of solitude. Do not forsake those who once took you and led you from darkness into light, as one day they will not return to catch you as you fall, and your very soul will shatter as though it were made of ice. A life is a delicate thing, and with but a single breeze, it can end in a second. Just one single movement could end my world. The trigger enveloped by my fingers would, if I were to simply tighten my grip, end my life in an instant. No-one would mourn me. No-one would even notice I had left. I would simply disappear, like a spectre in the bitter gloom of night.
For many years, I dwelt in the home of my parents. The home they had raised me in ever since I was born. Despite this, I felt no love for either my parents or their home. My father’s monotonous preaching of his own personal gospel, and my mother’s constant disapproving gazes did nothing to change me, they only infuriated me. I sat alone, everyday, gazing into the sky, wishing for better. One night, my father was late home. Then the next night he was later. The following nights followed the same pattern, until he staggered in at 10am on the morning of December 25th, Christmas. I had never cared much for presents, cards and family, but my mother had always attempted to keep up pretence that we were a model family. My father had been having an affair for about a month now, although my mother had only just realized, or perhaps she did not want to realize. Either way, I had known about for longer than my father in some ways, and I had been preparing for the inevitable shockwave that would echo through my life. But I did not expect what happened when my father was confronted. I saw a change in him. It was like the make-up being wiped off the face of a clown. Rage bubbled and frothed like a simmering broth in his face as he turned and slapped my mother viciously in the face. I ran. I flew up the stairs and grabbed two things, my bag, and a bottle of whiskey. I don’t know why I took the whiskey. I suppose seeing my father drinking it every hour of the day left an impression on me. I did not look back as I tore open the door and sprinted outside. I did not look back as I reached the end of the road. I did not look back as I reached the edge of town. I never looked back.
‘The city of the damned’, that is what I have come to call this place. It’s dank and grimy streets crisscross like the web of a spider, interweaving everything and everyone. On the first night I came here, I sat outside an estate agent, looking out onto my new home. It was somewhere between sunset and sunrise, but I no longer cared about the time. I had thought that I was at the lowest of lows when I was at home. I thought that it was my life that was the worst it would ever be, but I was so very wrong. Just across the street from me I saw a boy of about nine, maybe ten years. His face was horribly disfigured by what looked like the blade of a serrated edged knife. One of his legs was nothing but a badly treated stump, and he seemed as though paralysed. Nothing stirred in him. There seemed to be no flicker of life in his pale eyes. I whistled, there was no recognition, I shouted, he did nothing. I plucked a stone from the ground next to me, and threw it at him. It hit him directly in the face, and he did not twitch, then, quite suddenly, as though he was a puppet with severed strings, his head lolled forward, followed by the rest of his body. I realized he had died. Not even the bravest of men will die without tears, without emotion. Yet this boy, six years my junior, had died without a sound. Not even a whisper. As I began to comprehend what I had just seen, I glanced up at the estate agent window behind me. In large, gaudy letters, was their company slogan. It read “Home is where your heart isâ€. I laughed, almost manically. “What a pityâ€, I thought “Not everyone’s heart beats the sameâ€. I laughed again, and realized the whiskey I had taken was untouched. I smiled, unscrewed the cap and took a long hard drink. I glanced back at the corpse of the boy. “No-one cares about him, and if no-one cares, then neither do Iâ€, I whispered. Before throwing back my head and emptying the bottle of whiskey into my throat. I choked slightly as I felt a cold hand on my shoulder, and yet as I turned, I suddenly felt reassured as I stared into the face of a stranger. “Neither do Iâ€, he said, smiling, “Neither do Iâ€.
The man introduced himself as Jimmy, although most people called him The Saint. I realized why when he took me on the ‘Saintly Tour’ of the local shops first thing in the morning. We stepped into a Jewellers and it took him but a split second to produce a gun from his coat, leap the counter, and pin the terrified shopkeeper to the floor. He looked at me expectedly, and with a jolt, I realized he wanted me to rob the shop. I suppose most people would have panicked then, but I did not. I embraced this new way, this new chance. Within minutes, we were sat underneath an old, rusting train bridge, laughing and joking as if nothing were different. The contents of my rucksack told a different story however. I emptied it out, smiling as I realised that for the first time in my life, I was rich beyond belief. By the end of the day, we had sold it all to a select few of Jimmy’s ‘trusted associates’. I was already making plans for what Jimmy and I were going to do with the money, when he took me to meet his God. It was at that moment I saw Jimmy for what he was, a drug dealer. His nickname was nothing more than an affinity from his ‘disciples’. Yet I stayed with him. After he had bought more cocaine than I was ever likely to see again in my life, we went back to the crumbling train bridge. “Hereâ€, he said, holding a brick of cocaine out to me, “It’s your shareâ€. At first I refused, but then I realised I was no longer a child; I was no longer under the care of my ever so loving parents. I took the Cocaine, and that night Jimmy and I had what I can only describe as a ‘religious experience’. I remember clearly, as we danced, off our heads, with the other lost souls that had found their way to the city of the damned, Jimmy turning to me, and shouting in a voice that could have shook the very foundations of Hell, “This is end of the hollow lies that fill our minds! We are the children of war and peace! This, my friend, is the dawning of the rest of our lives!â€, and I believed him. From that night onwards, I was the Jesus of Suburbia. I led the revolution of minds. Every night would be spent fighting our own personal battles against our own person demons. But I was the one; I was the greatest of the worst. The underbelly of society, the lost and found box of life, we alone stood against the world.
The chilling bite of winter finally passed, and spring seemed like a new beginning for me then. It was in late March, I have forgotten the date, that I met Sean. At first I thought a ghost stood before me, his gaunt, translucent body seemed like it was neither of this world, nor of the next. Yet as I gazed longer upon his wide, glazed eyes, I realized that he was no ghost. He was much closer, much more real to me than anything. He was my future. I spoke to him for a long time. I sat with him and Jimmy, underneath the bridge that had become a home to me now, and I began to realize what had happened to him. He was once like me, happy and free. But his happiness had turned to insanity and his freedom had become insecurity. I asked him why, but he suddenly seemed fearful, as though the very air would smother him. At first I thought I had scared him, but then I thought suddenly with a clear head. For the first time since Jimmy and I had bought the Cocaine, I looked upon ‘The Saint’ with focused eyes. I then looked upon Sean, and I saw what Jimmy had done. He had turned what was once a bright young man, into a whimpering wreck. I ran then, as I had done all those months ago. Sean ran with me.
As soon as I had left Jimmy, I felt as though I had left a part of myself behind. I knew that in truth, Jimmy was that part, but I denied it then. I denied it to save myself from another truth which I knew in my heart, but could not bear in my mind. Sean took me back to his flat. He had explained that Jack, his flatmate, may shock me somewhat, but no amount of warning could have prepared me for what I saw next. I walked past Sean’s room, to next door, where there sat a man, with long, matted hair. It was the deepest of blacks, as were all his clothes. But what shocked me were his walls. They were covered with gruesome pictures of corpses in gruesome stages of dissection, with organs removed and also separately dissected. That is, all of the walls except one. This was bare except for a single newspaper cutting. I could see the headline from where I was standing. After reading it, I glanced back at the pictures on the wall, and then finally looked back on the newspaper article. “Jack the Ripperâ€, it read, and I knew definitely then, that this was not a man in the soundest of minds. He looked up at me, and spoke. His voice seemed so familiar, yet so very alien. I asked him the only question I could. Gesturing vaguely at the pictures, I forced the word out of my trembling lips, “Why?â€
He smiled; a cold smile that I knew contained no affection. “Because of humanityâ€, was the chilling response. “Such talents we have, from the simple joy of riding a bicycle, to the achievement of fixing it when the tyre is punctured. We invent such great things, but we covet them like gems. We become fat on our own swallowed pride as we always strive for our own gain. Humanity will destroy itself if it believes its cause is noble. We could save a hundred, but instead we kill a million. The local bishop is an extortionist, and no-one knows that you exist. You are not the Jesus of Suburbia, Saint Jimmy is a figment of your fathers rage and your mothers love. But it’s not over till you’re underground. Your time will never be up before it’s too late. This city is burning, but it is not my problem. I am but a servant of a better world. Where will all the martyrs go when the virus cures itself? Where will we all go when it’s too late? There is nothing left to analyse. Just don’t look backâ€. I never had, and I never would..
That morning, my life changed forever, but forever is nothing if eternity is to pass in an hour. I awoke to a scream that would have unsettled even the hardiest of soldiers. I leapt off of the sofa I had fallen asleep on the night before and ran to the window, and saw a woman lying in the street, her organs strewn over the pavement like litter. Her blood was trickling off of the kerb and down the road, before it disappeared into the sewers through a cold iron grate. Her face, which may have been attractive once, was marred with deep knife marks, from which blood was seeping into her hair. Her mouth was still open in the scream that had died from her lips as her life was taken. I became aware that Sean and Jack were stood behind me. Sean was shouting. I felt so distant, so detached. They seemed as though they were fading away. I heard Sean say something about ‘the Police’ and then I saw in Jack the same change that had come over my father on that night, a night that seemed so long ago now. Jack reached for a long, bloodied knife that lay on the table. He grasped it and then swung it upwards; slicing into Sean’s thin neck like a knife would cut butter. A crimson fountain erupted from Sean’s throat, drenching Jack in his blood. Sean stumbled back, screaming silently for air, and then he fell dead, nothing but a corpse on the floor. Jack turned to me, laughing. I thought I was going to die as Jack stepped forward, but then, like a spark in the night, Jimmy was there, and he pulled my arm, and we ran. I felt the part of me that had died when I fled from Jimmy the night before returning, and yet I felt two more falling away.
Suddenly, we stopped running, and Jimmy dragged me down an empty backstreet. He kicked open a gate, and shoved me through. He looked back; he forsook everything and looked back. As he did, in that crucial second, Jack tore round the corner. Jimmy looked at me then for the last time, said a single word, and shut the gate. He said sorry. Like a true saint, he died for my sins, for humanity’s sins. I felt alone for the first time since I left home, but it would not last. I turned, mournful, and saw that I was in the back garden of a house. I saw the back door of the house was open. Grateful for this small mercy, I went inside. There was a chair there, and on it was a boy. I went to him, as I knew then he was all I had. As I walked to him, my hands brush the gun in my pocket. Jimmy gave it to me. Jimmy gave everything to me.
The voices of Jimmy, Sean and Jack all echo in my head. They have gone for now, but they will never truly die. In my head they were born, and in my head they will remain. I suppose I always knew the truth, but to accept it would have accepted my own death. Now at last, I came full circle. In birth, we know nothing of the world, and it is life that corrupts us. But in death, we can embrace the goodness, the innocence that we lost so long ago. As I sat down, I smiled at the boy. I did the only thing I could do, I told my story to him. But he already knew. Of course he did. Jimmy showed me how to be the best, yet Sean showed me modesty. Jack showed me hatred, and as I looked at myself in the face of a child, I saw only love. He smiled at me, and at last I was un-tethered from the weights that held me.
To have lived but to have never breathed, is to die in tragedy. My life was no tragedy. I was free. I go now, to leave behind this hurricane of deceit. I am lucid in my thoughts and clear in my sight. This is nothing to anyone anymore. This is just a tale from another broken home. There is only ever one way to truly end what you have started. Nobody cares, as long as nobody else does. I ran away from my own pain, I felt no shame, yet now I am drenched in my sorrow. Now the night is creeping up, placing its hand on the shoulder of my long days. They are pulled away, and I welcome the enveloping darkness as my fingers meet my palm at last, the trigger beneath them clicks into place, and finally, my story ends.
So, that was my story, tell me what you thought. Examine it, evaluate it etc. Personally my favourite part to write was the speech in the last third:
I also had a pretty cool symbol of a cross at the end, it really suited it; but unfortunately I couldn't work out how to upload it.
P.S: How many of you realise where I stole the titles from.
The children of War and Peace
Or
The Jesus of Suburbia & Saint Jimmy
Or
The Jesus of Suburbia & Saint Jimmy
My heart beats out a thunderous storm, fuelled by a cocktail of rage and love. The hot trickle of tears streaming down my cheeks scalds me like fire as I stand alone at last. We all come into this world as a solitary being, and though we may live together, intertwining like ropes, we will all die alone. Although, as we twist and turn through life, no matter how hard we try not to, we will eventually become knotted in other lives. Birth and death, the two hardest moments of your life are moments we must all face in isolation. But in-between those dark and forlorn times, there is life. Without others, there can be no life. We will die as soon as we are born, nothing but a momentary existence of solitude. Do not forsake those who once took you and led you from darkness into light, as one day they will not return to catch you as you fall, and your very soul will shatter as though it were made of ice. A life is a delicate thing, and with but a single breeze, it can end in a second. Just one single movement could end my world. The trigger enveloped by my fingers would, if I were to simply tighten my grip, end my life in an instant. No-one would mourn me. No-one would even notice I had left. I would simply disappear, like a spectre in the bitter gloom of night.
For many years, I dwelt in the home of my parents. The home they had raised me in ever since I was born. Despite this, I felt no love for either my parents or their home. My father’s monotonous preaching of his own personal gospel, and my mother’s constant disapproving gazes did nothing to change me, they only infuriated me. I sat alone, everyday, gazing into the sky, wishing for better. One night, my father was late home. Then the next night he was later. The following nights followed the same pattern, until he staggered in at 10am on the morning of December 25th, Christmas. I had never cared much for presents, cards and family, but my mother had always attempted to keep up pretence that we were a model family. My father had been having an affair for about a month now, although my mother had only just realized, or perhaps she did not want to realize. Either way, I had known about for longer than my father in some ways, and I had been preparing for the inevitable shockwave that would echo through my life. But I did not expect what happened when my father was confronted. I saw a change in him. It was like the make-up being wiped off the face of a clown. Rage bubbled and frothed like a simmering broth in his face as he turned and slapped my mother viciously in the face. I ran. I flew up the stairs and grabbed two things, my bag, and a bottle of whiskey. I don’t know why I took the whiskey. I suppose seeing my father drinking it every hour of the day left an impression on me. I did not look back as I tore open the door and sprinted outside. I did not look back as I reached the end of the road. I did not look back as I reached the edge of town. I never looked back.
‘The city of the damned’, that is what I have come to call this place. It’s dank and grimy streets crisscross like the web of a spider, interweaving everything and everyone. On the first night I came here, I sat outside an estate agent, looking out onto my new home. It was somewhere between sunset and sunrise, but I no longer cared about the time. I had thought that I was at the lowest of lows when I was at home. I thought that it was my life that was the worst it would ever be, but I was so very wrong. Just across the street from me I saw a boy of about nine, maybe ten years. His face was horribly disfigured by what looked like the blade of a serrated edged knife. One of his legs was nothing but a badly treated stump, and he seemed as though paralysed. Nothing stirred in him. There seemed to be no flicker of life in his pale eyes. I whistled, there was no recognition, I shouted, he did nothing. I plucked a stone from the ground next to me, and threw it at him. It hit him directly in the face, and he did not twitch, then, quite suddenly, as though he was a puppet with severed strings, his head lolled forward, followed by the rest of his body. I realized he had died. Not even the bravest of men will die without tears, without emotion. Yet this boy, six years my junior, had died without a sound. Not even a whisper. As I began to comprehend what I had just seen, I glanced up at the estate agent window behind me. In large, gaudy letters, was their company slogan. It read “Home is where your heart isâ€. I laughed, almost manically. “What a pityâ€, I thought “Not everyone’s heart beats the sameâ€. I laughed again, and realized the whiskey I had taken was untouched. I smiled, unscrewed the cap and took a long hard drink. I glanced back at the corpse of the boy. “No-one cares about him, and if no-one cares, then neither do Iâ€, I whispered. Before throwing back my head and emptying the bottle of whiskey into my throat. I choked slightly as I felt a cold hand on my shoulder, and yet as I turned, I suddenly felt reassured as I stared into the face of a stranger. “Neither do Iâ€, he said, smiling, “Neither do Iâ€.
The man introduced himself as Jimmy, although most people called him The Saint. I realized why when he took me on the ‘Saintly Tour’ of the local shops first thing in the morning. We stepped into a Jewellers and it took him but a split second to produce a gun from his coat, leap the counter, and pin the terrified shopkeeper to the floor. He looked at me expectedly, and with a jolt, I realized he wanted me to rob the shop. I suppose most people would have panicked then, but I did not. I embraced this new way, this new chance. Within minutes, we were sat underneath an old, rusting train bridge, laughing and joking as if nothing were different. The contents of my rucksack told a different story however. I emptied it out, smiling as I realised that for the first time in my life, I was rich beyond belief. By the end of the day, we had sold it all to a select few of Jimmy’s ‘trusted associates’. I was already making plans for what Jimmy and I were going to do with the money, when he took me to meet his God. It was at that moment I saw Jimmy for what he was, a drug dealer. His nickname was nothing more than an affinity from his ‘disciples’. Yet I stayed with him. After he had bought more cocaine than I was ever likely to see again in my life, we went back to the crumbling train bridge. “Hereâ€, he said, holding a brick of cocaine out to me, “It’s your shareâ€. At first I refused, but then I realised I was no longer a child; I was no longer under the care of my ever so loving parents. I took the Cocaine, and that night Jimmy and I had what I can only describe as a ‘religious experience’. I remember clearly, as we danced, off our heads, with the other lost souls that had found their way to the city of the damned, Jimmy turning to me, and shouting in a voice that could have shook the very foundations of Hell, “This is end of the hollow lies that fill our minds! We are the children of war and peace! This, my friend, is the dawning of the rest of our lives!â€, and I believed him. From that night onwards, I was the Jesus of Suburbia. I led the revolution of minds. Every night would be spent fighting our own personal battles against our own person demons. But I was the one; I was the greatest of the worst. The underbelly of society, the lost and found box of life, we alone stood against the world.
The chilling bite of winter finally passed, and spring seemed like a new beginning for me then. It was in late March, I have forgotten the date, that I met Sean. At first I thought a ghost stood before me, his gaunt, translucent body seemed like it was neither of this world, nor of the next. Yet as I gazed longer upon his wide, glazed eyes, I realized that he was no ghost. He was much closer, much more real to me than anything. He was my future. I spoke to him for a long time. I sat with him and Jimmy, underneath the bridge that had become a home to me now, and I began to realize what had happened to him. He was once like me, happy and free. But his happiness had turned to insanity and his freedom had become insecurity. I asked him why, but he suddenly seemed fearful, as though the very air would smother him. At first I thought I had scared him, but then I thought suddenly with a clear head. For the first time since Jimmy and I had bought the Cocaine, I looked upon ‘The Saint’ with focused eyes. I then looked upon Sean, and I saw what Jimmy had done. He had turned what was once a bright young man, into a whimpering wreck. I ran then, as I had done all those months ago. Sean ran with me.
As soon as I had left Jimmy, I felt as though I had left a part of myself behind. I knew that in truth, Jimmy was that part, but I denied it then. I denied it to save myself from another truth which I knew in my heart, but could not bear in my mind. Sean took me back to his flat. He had explained that Jack, his flatmate, may shock me somewhat, but no amount of warning could have prepared me for what I saw next. I walked past Sean’s room, to next door, where there sat a man, with long, matted hair. It was the deepest of blacks, as were all his clothes. But what shocked me were his walls. They were covered with gruesome pictures of corpses in gruesome stages of dissection, with organs removed and also separately dissected. That is, all of the walls except one. This was bare except for a single newspaper cutting. I could see the headline from where I was standing. After reading it, I glanced back at the pictures on the wall, and then finally looked back on the newspaper article. “Jack the Ripperâ€, it read, and I knew definitely then, that this was not a man in the soundest of minds. He looked up at me, and spoke. His voice seemed so familiar, yet so very alien. I asked him the only question I could. Gesturing vaguely at the pictures, I forced the word out of my trembling lips, “Why?â€
He smiled; a cold smile that I knew contained no affection. “Because of humanityâ€, was the chilling response. “Such talents we have, from the simple joy of riding a bicycle, to the achievement of fixing it when the tyre is punctured. We invent such great things, but we covet them like gems. We become fat on our own swallowed pride as we always strive for our own gain. Humanity will destroy itself if it believes its cause is noble. We could save a hundred, but instead we kill a million. The local bishop is an extortionist, and no-one knows that you exist. You are not the Jesus of Suburbia, Saint Jimmy is a figment of your fathers rage and your mothers love. But it’s not over till you’re underground. Your time will never be up before it’s too late. This city is burning, but it is not my problem. I am but a servant of a better world. Where will all the martyrs go when the virus cures itself? Where will we all go when it’s too late? There is nothing left to analyse. Just don’t look backâ€. I never had, and I never would..
That morning, my life changed forever, but forever is nothing if eternity is to pass in an hour. I awoke to a scream that would have unsettled even the hardiest of soldiers. I leapt off of the sofa I had fallen asleep on the night before and ran to the window, and saw a woman lying in the street, her organs strewn over the pavement like litter. Her blood was trickling off of the kerb and down the road, before it disappeared into the sewers through a cold iron grate. Her face, which may have been attractive once, was marred with deep knife marks, from which blood was seeping into her hair. Her mouth was still open in the scream that had died from her lips as her life was taken. I became aware that Sean and Jack were stood behind me. Sean was shouting. I felt so distant, so detached. They seemed as though they were fading away. I heard Sean say something about ‘the Police’ and then I saw in Jack the same change that had come over my father on that night, a night that seemed so long ago now. Jack reached for a long, bloodied knife that lay on the table. He grasped it and then swung it upwards; slicing into Sean’s thin neck like a knife would cut butter. A crimson fountain erupted from Sean’s throat, drenching Jack in his blood. Sean stumbled back, screaming silently for air, and then he fell dead, nothing but a corpse on the floor. Jack turned to me, laughing. I thought I was going to die as Jack stepped forward, but then, like a spark in the night, Jimmy was there, and he pulled my arm, and we ran. I felt the part of me that had died when I fled from Jimmy the night before returning, and yet I felt two more falling away.
Suddenly, we stopped running, and Jimmy dragged me down an empty backstreet. He kicked open a gate, and shoved me through. He looked back; he forsook everything and looked back. As he did, in that crucial second, Jack tore round the corner. Jimmy looked at me then for the last time, said a single word, and shut the gate. He said sorry. Like a true saint, he died for my sins, for humanity’s sins. I felt alone for the first time since I left home, but it would not last. I turned, mournful, and saw that I was in the back garden of a house. I saw the back door of the house was open. Grateful for this small mercy, I went inside. There was a chair there, and on it was a boy. I went to him, as I knew then he was all I had. As I walked to him, my hands brush the gun in my pocket. Jimmy gave it to me. Jimmy gave everything to me.
The voices of Jimmy, Sean and Jack all echo in my head. They have gone for now, but they will never truly die. In my head they were born, and in my head they will remain. I suppose I always knew the truth, but to accept it would have accepted my own death. Now at last, I came full circle. In birth, we know nothing of the world, and it is life that corrupts us. But in death, we can embrace the goodness, the innocence that we lost so long ago. As I sat down, I smiled at the boy. I did the only thing I could do, I told my story to him. But he already knew. Of course he did. Jimmy showed me how to be the best, yet Sean showed me modesty. Jack showed me hatred, and as I looked at myself in the face of a child, I saw only love. He smiled at me, and at last I was un-tethered from the weights that held me.
To have lived but to have never breathed, is to die in tragedy. My life was no tragedy. I was free. I go now, to leave behind this hurricane of deceit. I am lucid in my thoughts and clear in my sight. This is nothing to anyone anymore. This is just a tale from another broken home. There is only ever one way to truly end what you have started. Nobody cares, as long as nobody else does. I ran away from my own pain, I felt no shame, yet now I am drenched in my sorrow. Now the night is creeping up, placing its hand on the shoulder of my long days. They are pulled away, and I welcome the enveloping darkness as my fingers meet my palm at last, the trigger beneath them clicks into place, and finally, my story ends.
So, that was my story, tell me what you thought. Examine it, evaluate it etc. Personally my favourite part to write was the speech in the last third:
His voice seemed so familiar, yet so very alien. I asked him the only question I could. Gesturing vaguely at the pictures, I forced the word out of my trembling lips, “Why?â€
He smiled; a cold smile that I knew contained no affection. “Because of humanityâ€, was the chilling response. “Such talents we have, from the simple joy of riding a bicycle, to the achievement of fixing it when the tyre is punctured. We invent such great things, but we covet them like gems. We become fat on our own swallowed pride as we always strive for our own gain. Humanity will destroy itself if it believes its cause is noble. We could save a hundred, but instead we kill a million. The local bishop is an extortionist, and no-one knows that you exist. You are not the Jesus of Suburbia, Saint Jimmy is a figment of your fathers rage and your mothers love. But it’s not over till you’re underground. Your time will never be up before it’s too late. This city is burning, but it is not my problem. I am but a servant of a better world. Where will all the martyrs go when the virus cures itself? Where will we all go when it’s too late? There is nothing left to analyse. Just don’t look backâ€. I never had, and I never would..
I also had a pretty cool symbol of a cross at the end, it really suited it; but unfortunately I couldn't work out how to upload it.
P.S: How many of you realise where I stole the titles from.
Chris Redfield on
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Posts
This is not really a story, but a very wordy attempt to do I have no idea what. Find the story here, and cut everything that gets in the way. Which is about 98 percent of the words in this thing.
Focus, focus, focus. That is your task.
First and foremost, this isn't interesting. At all. Is this a robbery or a trip to the grocery store? It doesn't capture the chaos and intensity of a robbery.
Second, you're telling, not showing. It's very dry, like an eyewitness account of the events. What are the characters feeling? What went through the protagonist's mind as he robs the store? What actually happened?
Third, there is no conflict, no action. Although it's very plausible for a robbery to be so routine - get in, get the money/goods, get out - it doesn't make for a good story. As I said before, you need to capture the feeling of the robbery; capture its intensity and sense of urgency.
I don't know about you but I think my Mum was there when I got popped out.
So basically your first paragraph is nonsensical rambling. If you thought it was in any way deep or meaningful then you're barking up the wrong tree.
Thanks for reminding me why I don't post in this forum that much.
Chris- First of all, I would change the name. Even if this was a great piece of lit, some people would be turned off by the fact that you named it after two Greenday songs.
Secondly, you need to lighten up the prose. Right now, the first few paragraphs zoom past moody and barrel right into self parody. Also, it's never that interesting to start your story with your character talking to the reader, not if that's all he does. Break up his conversation with actual events.
It's almost ironic that the two alternate titles are lyrics from Green Day or song titles from which said lyrics were taken by Green Day.